an uncountable number of teenage girls sidle up to me and ask if wolves are good lovers."
Tammy choked. "No!"
"Oh, yes. Their eyes, they are wandering."
"Oh, dear God." Tammy looked torn between horror and laughter. "If the teenagers start dating, Hawke and Lucas will both have aneurysms."
"Oh, you haven't heard the best part." She paused. "An entire pack of male juveniles cornered me the other day to ask if I didn't think leopards were good enough for me."
Tammy rubbed her forehead. "I think I have a headache."
"You don't get to have a headache. Only I get to have a headache." She tried to keep a straight face. "When I pointed out that I could gut them all with a butter knife but that I might have difficulty doing the same to Riley, they turned green. You might have to pet a few later on - I think I scared them off sex with leopard females."
Tammy was looking a bit green herself. "Do I want to know more?"
"Probably not." She ran a hand over her face. "Enough stalling, Tammy. Will my babies shift?"
"Yes, absolutely." Hopping off the stool, she went around the counter to pour some coffee. "I didn't realize you were concerned about that."
"I heard that when two different changelings mate, the animals cancel each other out and the child can't shift."
"Old wives' tale." Tammy made a face as she brought the cups to the table. "Makes no sense genetically. Genes don't cancel each other out."
"But some are recessive and others aren't," Mercy said. "How's that work with changelings?"
"We screw up those neat genome charts the biologists like to keep," Tamsyn said.
"So we don't know what'll happen?"
"No. We do. All healers keep extensive records, and I've been on the phone and on e-mail with hundreds of healers across the world over the past few days." She took a sip of coffee. "We're pretty sure what goes on, even though scientifically, we have no proof."
"I'll take healers over science any day." Especially when it came to changeling genetics. They confused normal scientists. Having been best friends with Dorian since childhood, she knew that better than most - the other sentinel had been born latent, unable to shift into the animal form that was his other half. His parents had taken him to the best M-Psy out there. None had been able to help. It had needed a woman locked into his very soul to do that.
"Okay." Tammy put down her coffee and took a deep breath. "You know how you and Riley are always fighting over dominance?"
Mercy nodded.
"Yeah, well, your babies are going to have the final word on the subject."
Mercy stared at Tammy. "How final?"
"Very. When two changelings of different species mate, it's the more dominant one in the pair whose genes are expressed as far as shifting goes." Tammy's eyes gleamed with hidden laughter. "Of course, no one knows when things get set in stone - it might depend on who's feeling more feral the day you conceive."
Mercy's hand fisted even as wonder bloomed inside of her at the thought of carrying a child. "We're not bonded yet." There would be no babies until her leopard accepted Riley without boundaries, without conditions, with absolute trust.
"I guessed . . . do you want to talk about why?"
"No. We're dealing with it. I'm just glad to know if we do make it through, our babies will be able to shift."
"You don't mind that your kids might not shift into cats?"
"They'll shift. That's what matters." She squeezed Tammy's hand, knowing the healer understood. "Dorian never talked about it - he's so fucking male - but I know how much it hurt him not to be able to go leopard. I've been way more worried about whether or not my kids would shift, than what they'd shift into."
* * *
On the other side of the world, Councilor Kaleb Krychek drove home through the pitch black of night on the outskirts of Moscow. Putting his vehicle on automatic navigation half an hour from his destination, he used his organizer to connect to the house's security node - he always checked his defenses before he ever entered the zone he considered safe. He had no personnel at his home, no one who could betray him. But the entire area around his property was alarmed and protected. He knew if a butterfly landed on his balcony.
He also knew when people had been creeping around where they shouldn't be.
Tapping into the full security logs, he saw the presence